Hackers attack Bitcoin exchange BitFinex and steal hot wallet

Hong Kong-based Bitcoin exchange BitFinex has been attacked by hackers, losing the content of its hot wallet. The company customers have been asked to cease all BTC deposits involving old addresses, as the platform believes all their hot wallet keys have been compromised.

Even though BitFinex processes a notable amount of transactions, the exchange confirmed the amount of stolen cryptocurrency is quite low: only 0.5% of their clients’ BTC. Thanks to the company’s security practices, 99.5% of its customer deposits are kept in multisig wallets.

“Although we keep over 99.5% of users’ BTC deposits in secure multisig wallets, the small remaining amount in coins in our hot wallet are theoretically vulnerable to attack. We believe that our hot wallet keys might have been compromised and ask that all of our customer cease depositing cryptocurrency to old deposits addresses,” reads BitFinex’s homepage.

The exchange, which has been operating in beta test for a while now, is working to develop a more secue hot wallet following the hack.

“We are in the process of creating a new hot wallet and will advise within the next few hours.”

The exchange has guaranteed that it will completely absorb the loss, so customers don’t need to worry about potential losses.

The real amount of stolen BTC is still unknown, but a member of the BitFinex team has revealed to CryptoCoinsNews. com that “the amounts in question are relatively small and easily absorbed by Bitfinex.”

The company is currently investigating the hack “and we will make a more complete disclosure in the coming hours.” The representative also confirmed the exchange is “working expeditiously to return operations to normal. (…) We have protocols in place for dealing with such compromises and our real-time detection systems performed as expected.”